Where it all started...

Long ago, before I was Wee Walks Belfast I wrote an article on Sir Otto Jaffe for the journal of the East Belfast Historical Society (in 2010!) I then wrote a shorter version for City Matters which was the magazine of the Belfast City Council at the time.

I've seen a lot of this information around the internet so I thought I'd reproduce the article in full here as Wee Walks Belfast very first Blog post.

East Belfast’s Forgotten Philanthropist

The name Otto Jaffe has long been associated with North Belfast, so it may come as a surprise that he made the East of the city his home for most of his adult life.

He was born in Denmark in 1846 to German parents, and his birth was registered in Hamburg where the family were from. He came to Belfast at the age of 12 and he entered the family business Jaffe Brothers Linen Merchants at the age of 16 after completing his education both here and in Switzerland. He married Paula Hertz of Hamburg in New York in 1879, and they had two sons, Arthur and William. Otto entered public life in 1894 when he was chosen to represent St Anne’s Ward for the Belfast Corporation and in 1899, he was elected Lord Mayor of Belfast for the first time.

Otto built his house Kin Edar in 1898 shortly before he became Lord Mayor of Belfast for the first time. It stood on ground near what is now Sydenham Avenue in East Belfast, and it was in keeping with the houses of the other wealthy merchants who lived in the area at the time. Kin Edar sounds like it must have been a very impressive residence. It had four receptions, nine bedrooms, servants’ apartments and baths etc. and its grounds (about eight acres) contained tennis courts, glass houses, a vinery, fruit and vegetable gardens, six outhouses and two workers cottages. It would have covered most of the area that is now Norwood Avenue and Norwood Drive.

In 1900 Otto Jaffe was knighted by the then Lord Lieutenant, Lord Cadogan and in 1904 he was made Lord Mayor of Belfast for the second time.

Sir Otto was well known throughout his public life in Belfast for his generosity of both time and money. During his first term as Lord Mayor, he and the Lady Mayoress raised £10,000 for the dependants of soldiers and sailors serving in the Boer War. He was officially connected with the Royal Victoria Hospital where he was Governor having also contributed £1000 of his own money to the original building fund.

Otto was particularly interested in education, and in 1905 he gave £4000 to the fund for better equipment for Queens College (now university). He served as Chairman of the Technical Education Committee for Belfast and also sat on the Dublin Committee, and for his services to education the Royal University of Ireland conferred on him an honorary law degree - the L.L.D. He was also an active member of the committee that got the public libraries act extended to Belfast leading to the establishment of the first free library.

In 1904, he contributed £4000 to the building of a new synagogue in North Belfast which was to replace the Great Victoria Street Synagogue built by his father Daniel Jaffe and three years later he erected the Jaffe School for the Jewish children of Belfast on the Cliftonville Road again at his own cost. He continued to finance both the Synagogue and the school, and apparently even had to pay for the dinner that was held in his honour for the opening of the school!

His other public roles included Justice of the Peace, German Vice Consul then in 1882 he was elected Consul, Belfast Harbour Commissioner and in 1901 he was High Sheriff of Belfast. In whatever little spare time he had he was President of the Natural History and Philosophical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and was interested in other institutions such as the Scout Movement and the Salvation Army

Sir Otto is also connected to east Belfast through the linen industry. In 1910 he erected the Jaffe Spinning Mill on the Newtownards Road, also known as Strand Spinning. In this capacity he provided work for about three hundred and fifty of the people in the area rising to six hundred and fifty in 1914 when the company expanded to make munitions. In later years the company was bought over by James Mackie and Son and is still visible today as the Portview Trade Centre.

So how come for a man who did so much for Belfast for many years there was not so much as a plaque or memorial to commemorate Sir Otto Jaffe? Follow along for Part Two